pennyspoetryfandomcom-20200214-history
William Alexander, Earl of Stirling
Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (?1570 - 12 February 1640) was a Scottish poet and nobleman, who was an early promoter of Scottish colonisation of Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and Long Island, New York. Life Overview Alesander was the son of Alexander of Menstrie. Created earl of Stirling by Charles I, 1633, he was a courtier, and held many offices of state. He studied at Glasgow and Leyden, and wrote among other poems, partly in Latin, sonnets and four Monarchicke Tragedies: Darius, Crœsus, The Alexandræan Tragedy, and Julius Cæsar (1603-1607), the motive of which is the fall of ambition, and which, though dignified, have little inspiration. He also assisted James I in his metrical version of the Psalms. He died insolvent in London. The grant of Nova Scotia which he had received became valueless owing to the French conquests in that region.John William Cousin, "Stirling, William Alexander, Earl of," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 362. Wikisource, Web, Mar. 5, 2018. Youth Stirling was the son of Alexander Alexander of Menstrie (Clackmannanshire)The family was old and claimed to be descended from Somerled, lord of the Isles, through John, lord of the Isles, who married Margaret, daughter of Robert II.Grossart & Smith, 924. William Alexander was born at Menstrie House, near Stirling, about 1567. He was probably educated at Stirling grammar school. There is a tradition that he was at Glasgow University; and, according to Drummond of Hawthornden, he was a student at the university of Leiden. Coutier He accompanied Archibald, 7th earl of Argyll, his neighbor at Castle Campbell, on his travels in France, Spain and Italy. before 1604 he married Janet, daughter of Sir William Erskine, one of the Balgonie family. Introduced by Argyll at court, Alexander speedily gained the favor of James VI., whom he followed to England, where he became one of the gentlemen-extraordinary of prince Henry's chamber. For the prince he wrote his Paraenesis to the Prince... (1604), a poem in 8-lined stanzas on the familiar theme of princely duty. He was knighted in 1609. On the death of Henry in 1612, when he wrote an elegy on his young patron, he was appointed to the household of prince Charles. In 1613 he (in conjunction with Thomas Foulis and Paulo Pinto, a Portuguese) received from the king a grant of a silver-mine at Hilderston near Linlithgow, from which, however, neither the Crown nor the undertakers made any profit. In 1613 he began a correspondence with the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, which ripened into a lifelong intimacy after their meeting (March 1614) at Menstrie House, where Alexander was on 1 of his short annual visits. In 1614 Alexander was appointed to the English office of master of requests, and in July of the following year to a seat on the Scottish privy council. Nova Scotia In 1621 he received from James I enormous grants of land in America embracing the districts of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Gaspè Peninsula, accompanied by a charter appointing him hereditary lieutenant of the new colony. This territory was afterwards increased on paper, so as to include a great part of Canada. Alexander proceeded to recruit emigrants for his “New Scotland,” but the terms he offered were so meager that he failed to attract any except the lowest class. These were despatched in 2 vessels chartered for the purpose, and in 1625 he published an Encouragement to Colonies in which he vainly painted in glowing colors the natural advantages of the new territory. The enterprise was further discredited by the institution of an order of baronets of Nova Scotia, who were to receive grants of land, each 6 square miles in extent, in the colony for a consideration of £150. An attempt made by the French to make good their footing in the colony was frustrated (1627) by Captain Kertch, and Alexander's son and namesake made 2 expeditions to Nova Scotia. But Alexander found the colony a constant drain on his resources, and was unable to obtain from the treasury, in spite of royal support, £6000 which he demanded as compensation for his losses. He briefly established a Scottish settlement at Port Royal, led by his son William Alexander (the younger). However the effort cost him most of his fortune, and when the region — now Canada's 3 Maritime Provinces and the state of Maine — was returned to France in 1632, it was lost. However Alexander's settlement provided the basis for British claims to Nova Scotia and his baronets provided the coat of arms and flag of Nova Scotia, which are still in use today. Long Island On 22 April 1636 Charles, told that the Plymouth Colony which had laid claim to the Long Island had not settled it, gave the island to Alexander. Through his agent James Farret (who personally received Shelter Island and Robins Island]) in turn sold most of the eastern island to the New Haven Colony and Connecticut Colony.The History of Long Island - Benjamin F. Thompson - Gould Banks and Company - 1843 Farret arrived in New Amsterdam in 1637 to present his claim of English sovereignty and was arrested and sent to prison in Holland where he escaped. English attempted to settle at Cow Bay at what today is Port Washington, New York in 1640 but were arrested and released after saying they were mistaken about the title.Year book of the Holland Society of New-York By Holland Society of New York - 1922 Earl of Stirling Alexander continued to receive substantial marks of the royal favor. He received, however, a grant of 1000 acres in Armagh. He was the king's secretary for Scotland from 1626 till his death, and in 1630 was created Viscount Stirling and Lord Alexander of Tullibody. In the same year he was appointed master of requests for Scotland, and in 1631 an extraordinary judge of the Court of Session. In 1631 he obtained a patent granting him the privilege of printing a translation of the Psalms, of which James I was declared to be the author. There is reason to believe that in this unfortunate collection, which the Scottish and English churches refused to encourage, Alexander included some of his own work. He had been commanded by James to submit translations, when James was carrying out his long entertained wish to supplant the popular version of Sternhold and Hopkins; but these the royal critic had not preferred to his own. It has been assumed from the scanty evidence that when Alexander was entrusted with the editing and publishing of the Psalms by Charles I, he had introduced some of his own work. In 1633 he was advanced to the rank of earl, with the additional title of Viscount Canada, and in 1639 he became earl of Dovan. His affairs were still embarrassed and he had begun to build Argyll House at Stirling. In 1623 he had received the right of a royalty on the copper coinage of Scotland, but this proved unproductive. He therefore secured for his 4th son the office of general of the Mint, and proceeded to issue small copper coins, known as “turners,” which were put into circulation as equivalent to 2 farthings, although they were of the same weight as the old farthings. These coins were unpopular, and were reduced to their real value by the privy council in 1639. Alexander died in debt on 12 February 1640, at his London house in Covent Garden. Writing Verse All of Alexander's literary work was produced after 1603 and before his serious absorption in politics about 1614. The verse may be classed in 3 groups, (1) poetical miscellanies and minor verse, (2) dramas, (3) the heroic fragment on Jonathan and the long poem on Doomesday. #His earliest effort was Aurora, containing the 1st fancies of the author's youth (London, 1604), a miscellany of sonnets, songs and elegies, showing considerable formal felicity, if little originality, in the favorite themes of the Elizabethan sonneteers. To this may be added the "Paraenesis to Prince Henry," "An Elegie on the Death of Prince Henrie," and shorter pieces, including a sonnet to Michael Drayton, who had called Alexander “a man of men,” and lines on the "Report of the Death of Drummond of Hawthornden." #He wrote 4 tragedies, Darius (1603), Croesus (1604), The Alexandraean (1605), and Julius Caesar (1607). The 1st and 2nd were published together in 1604 as the Monarchicke Tragedies, a title which was afterwards given by Alexander to a print of the 4 works in the editions of 1607 and 1616. They are didactic poems rather than plays, a sequence of reflections of the type of the Falls of Princes, the Mirror for Magistrates, or Lindsay's Dialog between Experience and a Courteour (known also as the “Monarche”). It is very probable that the last suggested both motif and title. The pieces are dialogues rather than dramas: the choruses are of the “Moralitas” type of Renaissance verse rather than classical; and the varied versification is unsuitable for representation. Yet they contain not a few fine passages in the soliloquies, notably one in Darius, (IV., iii.) on the vanishing of “Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls” as “vapours in the air,” which recall Shakespeare's later lines in The Tempest. #Of Jonathan: An heroicke poeme, only the 1st book (105 8-lined stanzas) was written. Doomesday; or, The great day of the Lord's judgement (1614) is a dreary production in 12 books or “hours,” extending to nearly 12,000 lines. It is written in 8-lined stanzas. Miscellaneous His Encouragement to Colonies was edited for the Bannatyne Club by David Laing (1867), and by Edmund F. Slafter, in Sir W. Alexander and American Colonization (Prince Society, Boston, Massachusetts, 1865). In addition to the pamphlet on colonization, he wrote (1614) a continuation or “completion” to the 3rd part of Sidney's Arcadia, which appears in the 4th and later editions of the Romance; and a short critical tract entitled Anacrisis, a “censure” of poets, ancient or modern. A collected edition of his works appeared in his lifetime (1637) with the title Recreations with the Muses (folio). "Aurora" and the "Elegie" were not included. A complete modern reprint, The Poetical Works ... now first collected and edited (but without the editor's name on the title-page) was published in 3 volumes 8vo. in 1870 (Glasgow: Maurice Ogle & Co.). Critical introduction by Thomas Humphry Ward Masson in his life of Drummond pronounces a severe judgment over the grave of Drummond’s friend, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. "There he lies, I suppose, to this day, vaguely remembered as the second-rate Scottish sycophant of an inglorious despotism, and the author of a large quantity of fluent and stately English verse which no one reads." He certainly played no very glorious part in the attempts of James and Charles to impose episcopacy on Scotland; unconscious all the while that he was one of those who were preparing the way for a ‘Monarchicke Tragedie’ as terrible as any of the 4 that he had put into verse. That the bulk of his poetry deserves that neglect which, as Mr. Masson truly says, has befallen it, is not likely to be disputed by those who have tried to read it. The precocious solemnity of his tragedies, all written before his thirtieth year, is too much for the modern reader, however successfully it may have commended the poet to the literary confidences of his pedantic master. With all the sonorousness and wave-like beat of their stanzas, they are mere rhetoric; they miss the genuine philosophic note of the somewhat similar plays of Alexander’s older contemporary, the Mustapha and Alaham of Lord Brooke. Still, Lord Stirling was an interesting man both in his life and in his writings, and he deserves to be not quite excluded from a collection of English poems. His time admired his work; his books sold; Habington, Daniel, Drayton, and many other poets praised him; above all, he was the close friend of Drummond — the Alexis to the Damon of Hawthornden. His ‘century of sonnets’ lack indeed the reality and the music of the best of Drummond’s, and his Aurora is a vague and shadowy goddess. But the two sonnets that we quote will show that Drayton had reason for calling him "that most ingenious knight"; and the ode that follows, though defaced by one or two blemishes, deals with the commonplaces of the tragic chorus in a way that is not altogether commonplace.from Thomas Humphry Ward, "Critical Introduction: William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (1567?–1640)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Jan. 29, 2016. Recognition The flag and coat of arms of Nova Scotia, granted by Charles I to Alexander in 1625, are still in use in the Canadian province today. Alexander's poem "Aurora" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900."Aurora," Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 6, 2012. A monument to Alexander was erected in Victoria Park, Halifax, in 1957 by the North British Society, using stones from Menstrie House.Victoria Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Wikipedia, March 8, 2017, Wikimedia Foundation. Web, Mar. 6, 2018. The Canadian Coast Guard has named the CCGS Sir William Alexander in his honor Publications Poetry *''An Elegie on the Death of Prince Henrie'' Edinburgh: Andro Hart, 1613, *''Doomes-Day; or, The great day of the Lords iudgement''. Edinburgh: Andro Hart, 1614. *''Poetical Works''. (3 volumes), Glasgow: Maurice Ogle, 1870. Plays *''The Monarchick Tragedies''. London: Valentine Simmes & G. Elde for Edward Blount, 1604; **revised & expanded, London: Valentine Simmes for Edward Blount, 1607. Non-fiction *''The Mapp and Description of New-England: Together with a discourse of plantation, and collonies''. London:W. Stansby for Nathaniel Butter, 1630. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:William Alexander 1640, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Jan. 29, 2016. See also *List of British poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 5, 2018. External links ;Poems * "Aurora" *Alexander in The English Poets: An anthology: [http://www.bartleby.com/337/293.html Sonnets from Aurora], [http://www.bartleby.com/337/294.html Third chorus from The Tragedy of Darius] *Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling at Poetry Nook (174 poems) ;About *William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling in the Encyclopædia Britannica *Alexander, William (1567?-1640) in the Dictionary of National Biography *Alexander, William, Earl of Stirling in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography *Sir William Alexander v.1567-1640, Halifax Regional Municipality. * Original article is at Stirling, William Alexander, Earl of" Category:1570s births Category:1640 deaths Category:Earls in the Peerage of Scotland Category:People from Clackmannanshire Category:Pre-Confederation Nova Scotia people Category:Scottish businesspeople Category:Scottish explorers Category:Scottish knights Category:Scottish poets Category:Scottish scholars and academics Category:Alumni of the University of Glasgow Category:Castalian Band Category:Governors of Acadia